Electrical heating devices using resistance heating elements in the form of PTC elements for producing a heating power, are nowadays known in numerous fields of technology, e.g. in automotive engineering. In the latter said heating devices are e.g. used for heating vehicle interiors and this will apply for as long as alternative heating methods using engine cooling water as the heating medium do not operate efficiently due to an inadequate engine heating. The electrical heating device can be either separately constructed or can be integrated into a rib/tube block through which cooling water flows, in that e.g. part of the tubes through which the cooling water flows is replaced by PTC tubes. In the case of such heating devices regularly individual PTC elements are placed in hollow reception means, such as profile tubes, which are plastically deformed by pressurizing their top or cover walls for bracing the PTC elements. To this end and according to the prior art using a suitable tool a pressing pressure id exerted on the hollow reception means from two facing top walls, so that correspondingly an internal spacing of the top walls decreases until they engage with the PTC elements received in the reception means so as to secure the some. It is considered particularly disadvantageous that after relaxing or relieving the press used, the deformed top walls of the reception means necessarily spring back by a certain amount due to an existing partial elasticity, so that the retaining force for the PTC elements decreases. In addition, comparatively high pressing forces in an equivalent order of magnitude of 40 t are necessary for the plastic deformation of the reception means, which leads to a complex construction of the pressing tools to be used.
Moreover, said heating devices, in addition to the above-described heating tubes (reception means and PTC elements) regularly have heat emission ribs in the form of lamellas or the like, which are connected in good heat conducting manner to the heating tubes. In the case of the known heating devices or methods for their manufacture, the lamellas must be fitted in a following, additional process step, so that there are disadvantageously long manufacturing times and corresponding cost increases.
The problem of the invention is to give a method and a profiler tube with which it is possible to overcome the aforementioned disadvantages.